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Te Arawa Lakes Trust is fighting plans by Rotorua Lakes District Council to release treated sewage into Lake Rotorua.
The trust supports a council upgrade of the wastewater plant, but it wants the council to find a land-based option for disposal.
Kaumātua Tipene Marr, who is also on Bay of Plenty Regional Council, says the discharge may be clear but it's not clean.
"It's got all the brown taken out of it but it has still got all those chemicals from – a contraceptive pill gets mimied down into the sewage, all the antibiotics we take all go into the water and into the oceans and into the rivers," he says.
Mr Marr says the council is talking about a mauri process, with the wastewater filtering into the lake through a wetland, but that's still not acceptable in terms of tikanga Māori.
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